


Like a motherf*cking adult

by bluebells



Series: The Shotgun Talk [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Post-Cage Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-14
Updated: 2011-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 08:19:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebells/pseuds/bluebells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Dean and Adam shout at each other, Sam dusts off his pacifying gloves and Michael passes well for a human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a motherf*cking adult

**Author's Note:**

> The accidental continuation of "'Try' being the operative word". Apologies for the confusion in this story, it's a consequence of ideas too big for the size of the fic! XD

Dean slammed the motel door shut behind him.

"Why the hell would you say 'yes', if he didn't force it out of you?"

Sam and Adam were already at the tiny, round table by the window, unloading their haul from the grocery store.

Adam collapsed into a chair with a sigh like he knew -- and had expected -- the lecture that was coming. Dean caught the knowing look in Sam's eyes as he slid the glass bottle of apple juice across the cheap, wooden tabletop.

The thought that Sam and Adam already had their own unspoken language made him snap.

"Hey! Do I get an answer?"

Sam's shoulders sighed. Everyone was sighing.

"It's water under the bridge, Dean," Sam shook his head, clearly appealing for him to drop it.

Dean stared at him.

"It was the goddamn apocalypse, Sam! You had to say 'yes' because Michael had Adam --"

Adam groaned and opened his arms to Dean's tirade.

"Great, put that on me, too."

"Don't roll your eyes at me," Dean pointed at him as if the motion would keep Adam in his chair, quiet and compliant. He ground his jaw when Adam just shrugged with his hands up in surrender, "You don't know what our family's been through to--"

Adam slammed his bottle down on the table.

"Who the fuck do you think you are? _This family?_ "

The chair clattered against the wall as Adam shoved to his feet.

"I _died_ just for being a part of this family -- my _Mom_ was murdered for taking your Dad in! So, don't ever tell me I don't know what this family's been through, I've lost, too, and no fucking less than you!"

The silence rang, Adam shook with rage and Dean shut his eyes, sucked in a slow breath for calm.

Sam glanced between them and the larger part of Dean, that was an unfortunately muted voice of reason at this point, hoped that Sam would cut them both down before they said anything else.

But Dean started shaking his head.

"Adam --"

"No."

Adam stepped over his fallen chair and grabbed his bottle from the table.

"I can't fucking talk to you, man. I'm not your scapegoat and I don't have to explain myself. I'm not doing this."

Dean didn't budge when Adam stopped, shoulder to shoulder with him by the door.

Adam exhaled tightly and looked him straight in the eye. Dean didn't know where he got the nerve to glare after the position he put them in that morning.

"Dude." Adam nodded for his brother to step aside.

"Where are you going?" Dean asked.

Adam's look turned exasperated. "For a walk, to cool down like a motherfucking adult; I said I can't talk to you right now."

Dean wanted to shove him headfirst into the wall. He focused on returning the glare instead.

Sam's voice lifted the haze of red in his vision and brought him back to the realm of non-violence.

"Dean."

It took a beat of inhuman restraint and he regretted it when Adam smirked, hovering in the threshold with his hand on the doorknob.

"Don't worry, big bro, I won't pick up any angels."

His dirty smirk turned triumphant as his voice dropped to a conspiratorial murmur.

"At least, not just _any_ angels."

The door shut before Dean could punch the look off his face.

It had been a long, long time since Dean had been stunned immobile with rage. He stared at the mahogany-tone chipwood for a handful of seconds and eventually shook his head in disbelief.

"I'm going to kill him."

Dean looked at his remaining brother at the sound of a bottle untwisting, air seal breaking with a pop.

Sam's throat rolled as he knocked back the other bottle of juice, slow and easy. The bottle was almost empty when he lowered it and shrugged at Dean, glancing to the empty room for an explanation to the deadpanned look Dean was treating him to.

"What?"

"Where were you just now?"

Sam blinked, eyes narrowing suspiciously like Dean was trying to catch him in a trick question.

"I was... right here."

Dean thrust a hand at the closed door.

"Adam's in bed with a frigging archangel!"

Sam gestured as though the bottle could lead the slow, cautious way to the truth.

"You know, I didn't hear those words, exactly."

Dean threw his head back with a tight groan and started pacing. Sam raised his eyebrows and returned to his bottle.

"Sam, they both said Adam wasn't forced and a couple of weeks after he gets back, Michael just happens to find us in the street asking for his hand in marriage! It's one hell of a coincidence."

Sam's face twisted like he'd been slapped.

"Okay, I'm pretty sure I didn't hear _that_ , either...."

Dean's voice dropped to a tight growl. He wasn't in the mood for games or Sam's unhelpfully pedantic attention to detail.

"Sammy."

Sam set the empty juice bottle on the table and offered his full attention with open hands. That steady, serious look in his eyes had seldom failed to appeal some sense back into an insane situation and Dean was for the first time grateful that Sam was working on a single, panic-free wavelength since he got back from the cage.

"Look. Our lives have always been anything but straightforward, right?"

Sam pointed to the lot outside where Adam was wandering somewhere in the supposedly calming yonder.

"I'll talk to him. Just give him his time... and some space."

Dean shook his head with a scoff, palming the back of his neck where the muscles were starting to stiffen.

"With Michael breathing down our necks?"

Sam's mouth pressed into a line. His only parting wisdom for his brother was a shrug and a firm, familiar look that asked _trust me._

"Let me talk to him."

-*-

"Why didn't you tell them?"

Adam stilled mid-motion, stripping the handful of grass heads from their stalks. He snorted a soft laugh and threw the headless stalks to the road before reaching for another bunch beneath the bench.

"Don't you guys ever start with 'hello'?"

The grass squeaked along the skin of his palm and broke with a crack.

"They think I tortured you," Michael said, from somewhere behind Adam's shoulder.

Adam kept his eyes on his work.

"Probably."

Michael's expectant silence was like a nudge at his shoulder and Adam couldn't undercut the small sting of guilt before he had to say something.

"It's none of their business," Adam said, quietly.

There was movement out of the corner of his eye and he swore under his breath when he realised Michael was rounding the bench to sit beside him. The bench didn't acknowledge the new weight with any creak or whine, but Adam knew that was a ruse. He knew the true volume of Michael's grace, rounding off somewhere close to 'too fucking much'.

Never again. Not that way.

Adam forced himself to look far down the road where the lines rose at the hill and blurred out of sight in the shimmer of the day's heat.

"After the pains I took to protect you...."

Adam smiled as a supply truck blared past, wind gusting in his face and almost pulling him forward in the vacuum of its passing.

This bench was seriously too close to the road.

His smile felt like more of a grimace.

"Back in that green room, you lied to me."

Michael's voice was a shrug.

"I did."

Adam shook his head, hands loose in his lap because they'd been through this argument dozens of times over the past hundred years in confinement.

No, Adam's condition hadn't been too complex to understand, but Michael knew that Adam hadn't wanted to die.

Adam just hadn't wanted to suffer through a slow, second death with no insurance he wouldn't be forced to relive it all over again. When the door slammed on Dean's back and Michael took form behind him, Adam was sure that he was over. But Michael had denied him oblivion.

"I won't apologise for sparing you," Michael said for the umpteenth time, tempered and proud. "I need loyalty like yours. You should know that she's under safeguard. I kept my word and I saw her before I came."

"You think I'm loyal to you."

Adam snorted a laugh. It was so unfair that Michael could just drop in on his mother's soul in Heaven like that.

"So. You thought you'd come find me, try your hand joining the soap of my happy family--"

Adam blinked away from the approaching moron in the RV who had his high beams on at noon and stopped.

Michael was hunched forward, leaning his elbows on his knees. His hands were clasped as he also looked from the road ahead to meet Adam's eyes and --

"Who the fuck are you wearing?" Adam accused, voice high and incredulous. He resolutely didn't let Michael's narrowed look of confusion affect him. "Are you kidding me?"

Michael didn't look much older than himself: dark hair, bright eyes, olive skin and toned. It was the same vessel from that morning and unfortunately... he looked even better up close.

Michael glanced down at himself, at his white shirt and deep blue jeans.

"His name was Lucas. He was going to die of an aneurysm."

Aneurysm, huh?

Adam gave the restored vessel a significant once-over.

If the late half of Adam's life had been spent with a family of upfront, well-adjusted folk (instead of the high-strung, emotionally destructive asshats he left back in the motel), he would admit one of the aspects he'd learned to enjoy most about Michael was that he played dirty. And he was good at it. Except that it made him a lying son of a bitch who would say anything to get the job done, like renege on certain conditions in Adam's agreement.

"So, do you lie to everyone or just me?" Adam asked.

Michael straightened against the bench, arm rising to lie along its back. His fingertips were almost close enough to touch Adam's shoulder.

"I'm not lying anymore."

Adam narrowed his attention on the road. No cars - a gap in traffic.

"Dean told me what you asked him -- and why the hell would you do that?"

"... He didn't approve." Michael's words were hesitant.

Adam cocked an eyebrow in amusement and propped one of his boots on the toe of the other.

"Shot you down like a dog in the street, right?"

Michael's eyes softened and his fingers lightly traced the shoulder seam of Adam's dark, worn jacket.

"You said that if we ever escaped, I should reconcile with your brothers."

Adam blinked at him.

"I said that? I bet you don't remember half of what _you_ said down there."

Michael stared at him in a way that made Adam feel like a jerk who'd mugged him and he did not understand _at all_.

"It -- Adam? How much do you remember?"

Falling, Sam at his hand, the glow of Lucifer in his eyes.... Michael's hands and lips pressed into Adam's hair.

"Like what?" Adam had no idea what Michael expected him to demonstrate.

The hand closed around Adam's shoulder, but he was distracted by a marching line of ants at the roadside and didn't see Michael's soft, injured frown.

Was there something important he was supposed to remember?

"I'm not going back."

That got Adam's attention. He rounded on the angel in disbelief.

"Why the hell not? It's all you talked about!"

Michael shook his head, hands sinking to his lap. He squinted at the oncoming traffic like the high noon sun could actually hurt his eyes.

"I tried. One hundred and twenty years should have been a pulse point in my existence, but we had vessels. Time moves slowly through your understanding."

Adam blinked at him, unconvinced.

"You saying you've turned over a new leaf because I stopped you from pressing fast-forward?"

"We all changed; Heaven has not." Michael looked at his hands and then caught Adam staring. "And you wouldn't be there."

Adam made a wounded noise, garbled through the involuntary laugh and his hand went to his heart, slamming over the irrelevant, momentary arrhythmia in a dramatic show. He plastered on a too-large, dewy smile.

"You say that to all the vessels?"

"I didn't say that to your father."

It was like being doused with a bucket of ice water. It probably showed on his face because Michael's lips curled in a small smile as he ducked his head and the bastard was _chuckling_. He could seem so human.

"Ugh, I take it back." Adam fashioned his hand like a gun and fired at Michael's smile. "Suddenly you're not so hot to me."

Michael's smile grew slow and calculating and Adam had to fight hard not to return it.

"Can you say my name yet?"

The smirk faded at the corner of his lips as the sensory memory played of hands that weren't hands and never stopping moving, of Michael kissing forgotten words into his mouth as Adam tried to form the name and failing each time the heat fanned through him like a high voltage current.

His muscles shivered and he swung a hand out, smacking the angel lightly in the chest.

"Don't do that, man." He couldn't quite repress the smile when he finally opened his eyes again.

Michael's thumb rubbed circles over his knee.

"You want to kiss me," Michael's gaze was even when Adam looked into his face, ghost sensations still flickering and crackling beneath his skin. "You should."

Adam glanced at his mouth and immediately kicked himself for it, but he couldn't fight the smile.

"Nice to meet you properly, topside."

He didn't notice when Michael had leaned closer, bracketing him in with his arms, before or after Adam let his hands settle on him.

Michael's smile was small, but warm and pleased.

"I'm glad to be met."

"But this 'courting' thing -- you're doing it backwards."

He scoffed at Michael's patient look of expectation, like he trusted that Adam would explain the strange words coming out of his mouth so Michael could finally close the gap.

"You're such a whore for me," Adam said, and then, "Ow," because the hand on his knee squeezed in warning and Adam was laughing when Michael pushed up against his side, slid a hand around the back of his neck and kissed him like he was finally home.

And that's how Sam found them.


End file.
